Adam Irwin isn’t just a proud Scouser, he’s far more specific than that.

He is actually proudly Kirkdale born, a fact of geography and loyalty which played its part in a creative idea to which he’s been devoted for more than a year.

Branding Merseyside has been what Adam jokingly refers to as his vanity project – his personal challenge to come up with a distinct identity for areas on both sides of the river.

He’s lost count of the number of places which now have their own logos, from Aintree to Port Sunlight and suburbs in between and But there are still plenty more to come, and tthe 32-year-old is happy to keep dedicating his spare time to researching and creating the colourful, quirky designs.

Adam’s day job is as a senior designer with award-winning Liverpool studio Splinter and it was as a result of landing a contract with them that Branding Merseyside was first sparked.

“We were rebranding Rhyl and as I was brainstorming for that it made me think about doing something similar for parts of Liverpool,” he explains.

“I grew up in Kirkdale and I still live there now - my wife is from Port Sunlight but I dragged her over here! - so that was the first place I looked at. I wanted each one to use the city’s history, so I did a bit of research on the internet to find facts about the different places. With Kirkdale, it was actually a seaside town with sand dunes, the same as Bootle, but I didn’t want it to be about that. I live by Kirkdale station, which is close to the docks, so I decided to use them instead.”

Adam says when he began the project, he found an endless wealth of facts.

“When I did Belle Vale, I found out it had one of the largest number of prefabricated homes in the UK, which was just mind- boggling.

“I think there are all these little facts that people don’t know about the areas they live in and a lot of people don’t necessarily feel a connection to a particular suburb or town either – they’ll just say they’re from north Liverpool or south Liverpool., but they don’t have that identity with individual areas.”

As he’s added to his portfolio of places, he’s found some people can be a little protective.

“I had a man ring me and say the fact I’d used about Bebington – that it was the site of The Battle of Brunanburh in 937 AD – really belonged to Bromborough. He was quite upset that I’d not credited where he lived, but I explained that because it was so long ago, no-one actually knew for sure!”

Adam creates his designs during down-time from his Splinter work, which explains why it’s been ongoing for more than 12 months.

Inspiration, he says, comes from a variety of sources.

“Me and my wife were going to the park a lot with my little son, so that’s how I ended up doing the Palm House in Sefton Park,” he explains.

“I get requests from friends as well. They’ll contact me and say ‘how about doing where I live?’. That’s how Rainhill (the site of the 1829 Rainhill Trials) came about. It wasn’t one I’d considered but a colleague lives there so it made me look at its background.”

Although he now has quite a collection, Adam says he has no firm ambitions for his Doodlicious designs.

“I didn’t really think about what would happen to them when I started, it was just something I enjoyed doing,” he adds.

“But ideally I’d like to see my designs being used to promote the city in a positive way, maybe on street signage. I’d love to have the opportunity to do something like that for Liverpool.”